1001-Soultaker

Film Year:  1990
Genre:  Horror
Director:  Michael Rissi
Starring:  Joe Estevez, Vivian Schilling, Greg Thomson, Robert Z'Dar
MST Season:  10

The Movie

A group of teenagers find their souls flung from a car accident.  As they try to piece together what happened and how to fix it, they discover a man dressed in black chasing after them.  He is actually a grim reaper seeking to cross them over into the afterlife.

Inspired by star/screenplay writer Vivian Schilling’s near fatal car accident, Soultaker takes that personal experience and turns it into a crappy horror movie.  To an extent I can almost picture this being turned into a really bad horror franchise, but all it needed was some more talented people guiding it.  I mean think about it, this is almost the exact same storyline as the Final Destination series.  But of course, that seemed to be successful without talent so why not this?

Ultimately the script feels lumped together without a real vision or direction.  A story using Death as a character antagonist should work, but it loses bite when he’s a love sick puppy with a glow-ring.  A Soultaker’s function should also be called into question, as death seems like it should relate to them but it never does.  The finale is a race to prevent the female lead from having her body taken off of life support, but if she was and the Soultaker having never taken her soul, would she die?  It appears so, because there is drama in the idea of her flatlining, but where would her soul go?  The movie’s motivation for the Soultaker is “restoring the balance,” but what does that mean?  Does it have to do with souls trapped on Earth without a body?  Is that limbo?  If collecting these souls is so important, why are they only sending one Soultaker when clearly there are many, who seem indifferent to the idea of these kids surviving?

Soul logic never quite makes sense in the context of the film, as nobody can see or hear these teens yet they can touch, push, and pick up anything in sight.  They spend most of their time communicating verbally with the living world, when logically they could communicate visually by creating a message with what they can touch.  Also one of Soultaker’s ways of catching his prey is to choke them and/or snap their necks, leaving a corpse behind.  “He’s dead!” a character screams.  But is he?  Can you really “kill” a soul?  Especially if it can’t pass on without the Soultaker’s glowy ring.

And as stupid as the directions this movie takes its concept are, there’s something oddly charming about it.  As far as trashy late-80’s/early-90’s filmography goes, Soultaker might be the most enjoyable one featured on Mystery Science Theater.  That doesn’t make it a good movie, but it at the very least has a heart.  It just didn’t have skill backing it up.

The Episode

It’s the tenth season of our favorite series, and to help celebrate fan favorites Joel and Frank are here to party with us!  Their cameos are regulated to about two host segments each, and Joel doesn’t even get to enter the theater for a riffing reunion, but it is good to see their faces again.  If only we had Trace and Josh to make it perfect.

Soultaker will forever go down as the episode where they made their grand cameo, but is it really a great episode aside from that?  I can honestly speak as a fan who grew up during the Sci-Fi era who had no clue who either were when this aired, which I point out to say that I can view this episode’s merits objectively outside of the gimmick.  And I can definitively say yes, Soultaker is an amazing episode.

So why are Joel and Frank here?  Well, the storyline of the episode has the Satellite of Love malfunctioning after Dr. Forrester implanted an auto self destruct after ten years (neveryoumind that the ship is technically thousands of years old due to the “time and space” storyline in season 8).  Joel hitches a ride in the escape pod from Mitchell and plans to fix all that ails them.  Meanwhile, in a movie related twist, the long since deceased Frank has come back as a Soultaker and is way below his quota.

Personally, even though I enjoy these segments, Joel and Frank aren’t even in my favorite host segment of the episode, which has Mike “take command” of their malfunctioning ship and make things worse.  I love how Mike tries to take influence from various Star Trek shows, yet Servo and Crow constantly have to correct him that the SOL doesn’t work like a Starship.

“Shields up!”
“Shields?”

But what about the movie segments?  The host segments could easily overwhelm any episode, but the theater work in this episode is a mad powerhouse that holds its own.  The movie is dumb but watchable, while the riffing just enhances the films simplistic likability.  They tend to just roll with the movie, flowing into its ineptitude instead of merely pointing it out.  By the film’s padded climax they get a bit frustrated with it, and it’s hard to blame them, because it has gone far too cuckoo to make any logical sense out of.  But they seem to love the flavor of the 80s and they play it up to the max (“Zeppelin was wrong, man!”  “SHUT UP!”  “There is no stairway to heaven!”  “ZEPPELIN’S NEVER WRONG, MAN!”).  They do lose a tiny bit of leeway since technically this movie is a 90’s film, but most everything about the style of the film is trapped in the decade that preceded it so I’ll give them a pass on that.

But the fact is that Soultaker is a rousing success both in and out of the theater.  This is one worthy of popping in anytime, and definitely should be apart of any MSTie’s collection.  And if you haven’t checked it out, I recommend doing so immediately.  OR I’LL TAKE YOUR SOUL!

Classic

The DVD

Soultaker sucked our souls out through Shout Factory’s Volume XIV release, which featured great audio and video.  The only special feature was an interview with star Joe Estevez, who loves the movie they made as well as the MST version.  He shares some set stories, gushes about Robert Z’Dar, and discusses what he finds interesting about the role.  He briefly mentions being in Werewolf but doesn’t go into any specifics.